Similar to the absurdist scribes before him from Eugène Ionesco to Samuel Beckett, there’s a method to Wes Anderson’s comedic madness, from deadpan rhythm to the punching of words, all wrapped up in a period setting on a whole other plain.
How does Anderson pull it off? Bryan Cranston, who plays the Playhouse 90-like narrator in Anderson’s latest, Asteroid City, which premiered at Cannes, likens the filmmaker to an orchestra conductor and the actors his “particular instruments.”
“Without exactly knowing,” Cranston says, “He conducts it.”
Asteroid City, a play within a play, largely takes place in a 1950s desert town where some are stranded, and others have been forced to visit as there’s a young Stargazer convention. Behind the scenes, we see we’re watching a Broadway play. What’s it all about? Some think it’s a commentary on Covid quarantine, while others believe these protags are stuck in purgatory. In the end, a kid kicks up and sings a country romp. It’s funny because it just doesn’t make any sense. But it keeps you thinking after leaving the theater.
Breaking down Anderson’s process with his actors, it begins with an animatronic he creates, a slideshow of sorts, which gives the actors a preview of the film. They then go away and come back with their own ideas to bring to the set.
Says Scarlett Johansson whose deadpan demeanor has canvassed all walks of comedy from Woody Allen to SNL, “Wes has such a great sense of irony. I think that you see that in his films.” She plays Midge Campbell, a Hollywood starlet whose arguably in a funk. She’s out in Asteroid City with her science genius daughter.
“He observes things in your performance, that are very exiting…and you’re doing it and he notices it, and the performance becomes more nuanced because he encourages certain behaviors,” Johansson adds.
Jason Schwartzman, who at the onset of the video above explains how he, along with the other Coppolas, first met Anderson (the actor actually met the director at the Rushmore audition), says that thespians on the filmmaker’s set are “forensic detectives, like asking questions (about) something really happened. It’s like an archeological dig: we’re trying to find the thing that’s already there, but he’s the one that identifies that’s the bone we were looking for.” Schwartzman plays a photographer widower whose car breaks down in Asteroid City. His wife had died and he needs to break it to his young girls. He fancies Johansson’s Midge.
Listen to our convo above with Cranston, Johansson, Schwartzman, Jeffrey Wright and Stephen Park.
Cranston making sense of Asteroid City‘s debris says, “There’s a part where (Schwartzman’s) Augie goes in and talks to the director. Augie says, ‘I don’t understand the play.’ He says ‘you don’t have to. Just keep telling the story.’ That’s what the film meant to me: We go through life, and we don’t know how long our lives will be.”
